Welp, it’s Monday, I’ve been back from vacation for over a week, and routines are happening again. Our road trip through New England actually brought more reading time than vacations usually do – all that car passenger time; I’m fortunate to be able to read in a moving vehicle – and I’m glad to report I was able to keep up the momentum over the week at home, notwithstanding it being rather a stressful one. As we rolled back into Virginia last Sunday, I started The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild, which proved to be a quick and delightful read. I blazed through, finished it on Tuesday, and turned to a book that has been on my TBR for ages: the Australian classic Picnic at Hanging Rock. This tense and atmospheric story of an unexplained disappearance of several girls and a teacher from a posh girls’ school actually takes place in February, which is the height of the hot Australian summer. So I was torn: should I read this in the heat of my own summer, or save it for Valentine’s Day reading? In the end I opted for the summer reading experience and it was definitely the right call to read when the mercury is through the roof – the heat is such an important part of the story, I think reading it in winter would have felt odd.

So much for my finished books: on to current reads. (One is missing here: Nugget and I read reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at bedtime and we’re almost done – down to the penultimate chapter. So that’s a current read but it takes so long I don’t include it in these posts until we finish it, which will probably be this week.) After Picnic at Hanging Rock I was originally thinking I’d move on to The Greengage Summer, but I think that might be another tense read, so I decided to put it off and read Helen Ashton’s quiet domestic novel of a family and their various houses, Bricks and Mortar. I’m working on some DIY renovations around my unpacking schedule, so a house novel felt like it might be fun for this week. And speaking of those DIY renovations, yesterday was dedicated to priming and painting the kitchen cabinet doors, and that’s a task that always goes more quickly with an audiobook. I started At Bertram’s Hotel on Audible and listened to about a third of it while working on my paint project (before switching to Taylor Swift to get my energy up). Between commutes and errands, I expect I’ll finish it this week – it’s not very long.

This turned out to be rather a bigger project than I thought it would, but I’m almost done! Nineteen cabinet doors, all given a coat of primer and two coats of paint on each side yesterday – oof, and you can bet I’m sore today. I’m reinstalling them in the kitchen, updating the handles, and then they’ll get one little touch-up in a few spots and I’ll be DONE applying lipstick to this pig.

What are you reading this week? And any home renovation projects underway?